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Pfizer Stock Loses Ground with Drug Development Canceling

Pfizer announced last Saturday that it will stop the development of Torcetrapib after it found out that the death rate of patients who took the drug were 60% higher than the test group that didn`t take it. The company`s shares dropped b $2.96 a share to $24.90 a share at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Pfizer chief executive Jeffrey Kindler told reporters that the company will increase the rate of its reorganization due to the loss of the drug.

Before pulling the plug on the study that was supposed to produce a drug that would combats cholesterol and produce a lot of revenue for the company, the company announced that it will cut 20% of its sales staff in the United States, some 2,200 positions. Analysts predict that the loss of the drug will force the company to fire an additional 10 thousand employees. Pfizer currently provides work for 100 thousand people around the world.

The company restated that it intends to put six new products on the market by 2010, but experts say that the company doesn`t have other products in development that have the same sales potential as Torcetrapib. This crisis is one of the worst in the company`s 157-year history. Pfizer invested nearly a billion dollars in the development of the new drug, which it extremely needed to replace Liptor. Liptor is Pfizer`s current best selling drug, which generates a quarter of the company`s revenues, some $51 billion but this will undoubtedly change once it loses its patent in 2011.